EVE New Citizens Q&A

How much of this game is actually just waiting?

Waiting for skills to finish, for fleets to form, sales to go through...

In short, how much of my time would be spent just staring at my ship while it orbits something or spins in a station?

I don't mind any actual waiting, but it bugs me that I'd be essentially paying to wait.

Last week I considered buying a character. I have been playing for about a month, but I am now glad I did not. Yes there is some frustration with waiting for skills to finish, but I think that anticipation and the goals that can be reached with patience are worth it. I am looking forward to my first T2 guns in 24hrs and in turn my next mission level and the future promise of pvp when I am ready.

I asked about a few characters for sale but I will wait I think and see how I naturally develop and in doing so my ability as a player.

There is no reason that you should ever be waiting for skills to finish. Never ever should you be waiting for skills to finish training. Yes when a skill finishes you might be able to use a T2 version of a mod instead of T1 or have a fit that you worked on in EFT actually fit with your skills now but there is no reason that you should ever be waiting for skills to finish.

Eve has no level cap and wasting a whole bunch of time just to get to level cap so that you can start playing the game is not something that happens here.

As far as waiting for things to sell if you are doing that then IMHO you are playing the market wrong. However I'll admit that it's your market strategy so you can do it how you please.

As far as waiting for a fleet to form up you don't have to wait. You could be the one forming the fleet or you could be off doing something else while the fleet is forming or you could be the one out scouting for action that the rest of the fleet is waiting on. Waiting for a fleet to form is a personal decision that you make and there is no game mechanic that forces you to do so.

Now some fleets might be worth waiting for, but again that is a choice that you make not something thrust upon you by the game.

I never waited. I was running tutorial missions from day one. I tried to get good at probing because someone said relic sites were good money.

The day I decided this game wasn't actually stupid and/or worth my subscription was when I was bored between SoE missions and I was running a Serpentis Hideaway .. I got a pop up about a Serpentis Narcotics Warehouse so I asked what that was in local. We had to go to lowsec to run it, it felt scary to get there to this special mission and it was a super good drop we both split like 100m ISK. And I made a friend

By the time I was done with the SoE epic arc I was in a Thrasher with T2 autocannons. I just stuck to what I could do and asked for help when I needed it.

I've never once waited for a skill.

EVE is a game where the content is very much reliant upon yourself. There may be instances where something particular may not be able to be done (such as a specific fit, flying a specific ship, etc), but that doesn't mean there aren't things to be done. You are limited only by what you are willing to do.

Well, dont wait then, and do something else in the meantime? :)

Then you are playing EVE wrong.

I've never had to wait for something.


Ooh, I need this skill to finish >>> Let me do something else while it trains.

Ooh, I have 2 hours before the fleet forms >>> Let me do something else while time ticks by.

Ooh, I have to wait till stuff sells >>> No need for me to sit here waiting, let's do something else.




There is ALWAYS something to do in EVE by you. If you sit there waiting, you lack the mindpower to think outside the box or step outside your comfort zone.


As a personal example, from my days in 0.0:

I was balldeep in the Russian Drone Wars, which meant lots of hostiles so not many "Non-PvP" gameplay there. So while we didn't have fleets up and if it was too hostile to do something, I just launched a 2nd client, logged in my RvB alt and went beserk on him. All at the same time I would keep 0.0 comms running, so the moment I heard that "faeces was hitting a rotating object" there, docked the RvB character and switched to my main.

I've never waited for something to finish in EVE that wouldn't let me play.

As has been pointed out this game is much more about personal skill than character skills.

If you are sitting in station waiting for skills to train then you are missing out on valuable experience. We've all seen the new players that think their skills are holding them back so they buy a high skill point character and then come here and complain about how this game isn't fair.

On the flip side of that we can link you video after video of vets on day's old alts pwning. And those videos will mostly be from back when you were born with 56K SP instead of the 400K that you get now.

I can tell you this: I could give you a 200 million skill point character and you'd still would have to learn how to play the game. It would change almost nothing for you. Your learning curve would remain essentially as it was before. This is why I wish that they gave everyone an all level 5 character on the test server, so new players could go over there and see that even fully skilled they still need to learn the game.

I don't even want to know what this means coming from a female avatar. My mind automatically tries to put it in context and I have to work to make it stop doing so.